Wednesday, June 19, 2013

According to Wikipedia, Gustave Massiah (born 1941) is a French economist, urbanist, and political analyst. He was a professor of urbanism at the French Ecole spéciale d'architecture in Paris, as well as the head of the CRID (Centre de recherche et d'information sur le développement).
Gustave Massiah is one of the founders of the French Attac, of which he had been its vice-president until 2006, and he remains a member of its scientific council.

Regards Magazine in France published his poetic essay inspired by ECHOLILIA to co-incide with Father's Day.

After a challenging holiday, I recieved this on Monday. The gift I was never expecting:

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Popular Photography magazine publishes an edition in Brazil that includes ECHOLILIA. It hits the newstands and subscribers mailboxes. A blog know as HYPENESS grabs it, does a quick Google search, cranks out a small gallery of ECHOLILIA with text and it spreads like wild fire. Suddenly your site is getting 1900 hits a day, for days upon days. Copies of ECHO are selling as never before. Everyone in Brazil is friending you on FB. Parents, teenagers, teachers, very little of it has to do with photography. It seems like it's about something else. The universal greeting, in translation, seems to be "Big Hugs".

The big daily has EPOCA, a weekly magazine. They license the story and it publishes in hard copy. The internet love and hate machine starts all over again. I'm charmed, I'm thankful, but it seems so far away.

I need the love and hate here and now!

Here is a sample:

I know, I am not your friend, but I would like to be. I know that you don´t know me, but you will... (haunted by your son's pictures)

Welcome to this open bubble with no air, hugs.

-JDI personally would find it sad to use my son as a guinea pig on meaningless photos. -Anonymous

Welcome, my family was very moved and happy with your photos. It's really a wonderful job. I am the father of an autistic and also love taking his picture! Big hug!!-RF

my good friendlook at the skyi blinked for your kind faceright nowyou can hear my salutation-SKI recently came upon your 'Echolilia'. I was intrigued by the subject as I work with high schoolers with autism. Spending five days a week seven hours a day with autistic kids, I couldn't help but to feel very moved by your photographs of your son. I know that the initial goal was to find an emotional bridge between you and your son, but I think you also succeeded in translating a certain code to autism. One that shows how people with autism absorb the world through their senses in a completely unique way. Thank you for sharing something so very personal. -SO

I discovered you thanks to the recent Popular Photography issue that features your Echolilia project. I must say, it is a beautiful and very moving project. Also incredibly inspiring ! How many people can take something that is a difficulty ("The series began with capturing habits that had driven Archibald crazy") and turn it into a positive, revealing, incredible thing ("we had this mutual sense of discovery") ?Bless you for being that person.-AKI saw your work, and frozen my head. You are and your son are just amazing.-LG

So is any of this true?
Do people really want to hug me? Are we really "amazing"? Did I really use someone as a guinea pig?

Well no, of course not.

But it is a good example of what can happen when an art project sneaks out of the little art world and somehow reaches the masses. At that point it's not really about art anymore, it's about something else.

Sunday, June 9, 2013

The GPS tells me we are here, but we look around and it doesn't feel right.

Where is the romance? Where is the quaint? Where are the cottages designed to make you want to run away from the world and hide in, live in...the place to lead your new storybook life?

All we see is a framed out shed made of two by fours, a rain tarp, maybe a trailer hitch...none of these pieces are adding up.

Enter Jay Shafer. Shouting hello over the locked gate, he opens the door and leads us in. Now...if you look here...and only here...you'll have your storybook life. And then some. Don't look to the right or left, and certainly ignore the man behind the curtain.

Of course, I eat it all up. Shafer's backround as an artist has taught him how to build this quality home that delivers the projected fantasy...so strongly that you actually see the size as an asset, not a liability. The contruction feels and is the real thing...and the design is even more.